If you spend most of your leisure time out of the house, none of these plans will do much for your bottom line. But if home is your favorite place to be, you could profit. Based on the estimates of energy companies, most people use about 31% of their total energy on the weekends. If you go through the average 1,000 kWh per month, you'll get about 310 kWh for free. Using data compiled by the EIA, we estimated 30% of average total energy is also used during evenings (including weekend evenings), working out to about 300 free kWh.

As you shop, you’ll see the rates advertised in terms of kilowatts per hour (kWh) — the energy used to power 1,000 watts for one hour. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average price per kWh for electricity in Pennsylvania is 14.52 cents, while the Public Utility Commission's “price to compare” currently hovers around 8.0 cents. Clearly, there’s a lot of price variety out there. And, given the hundreds of providers doing business in Pennsylvania, exploring electricity options can be pretty toilsome.

There are a variety of different types of gas and electricity plan that are currently out there for prospective customers to consider. Some plans offer fixed rate deals , these allow you to be sheltered from price rises over an agreed period of time. Other plans allow you to manage your entire account online, making it easier and more efficient for you to handle your energy supply.

If you would rather have a steady rate and not think about twice about starting a load of laundry at 6:30pm versus 7:30pm, Direct Energy’s standard, 12-month, fixed-rate plan Live Brighter runs at an affordable 7.99 cents per kWh. Again, using 1,000 kWh per month would add up to a yearly total of $958.80 — higher than both Free Nights and Free Weekends, but also a lot simpler.

uSwitch 2018 customer ratings are based on an independent YouGov survey that was conducted between 7 November and 1 December 2017. A total of 17,313 UK energy customers were asked to rate their energy supplier on overall satisfaction, transfer process, value for money, customer service and how likely they were to recommend. We equally weighted those five scores across suppliers with at least 50 responses to create an average supplier rating for each.
Switching electricity supplier could shave pounds off your bills. But it’s not always about how much hard cash you could save. You might be fed up with poor customer service, you might want greater visibility of your usage through an app or you might want to choose your supplier based on their green credentials, or whether they supply a smart meter.